Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Hong Kong update

I haven't written anything in two days because I haven't been feeling well enough to do anything interesting, or even anything at all. I've gone straight back to the hotel from the office and collapsed on the bed for most of the evening. This morning I'm feeling better so hopefully now I'll be able to go out and see more of the city. Our primary IT contact here wants to take us to the Peak on Thursday night for dinner, hopefully not at McDonald's. And my NY colleague wants to go shopping for a camera, so I'll tag along with him and see if I can find a better deal here than in Tokyo.

The weather here has been hot, humid, and rainy. Every day the clouds roll in during the afternoon and our windows are lashed with rain. It usually clears up before we leave at 5:30, but last night I could hear heavy showers after dark. When it's not raining it's just hot. Every morning I start to sweat as soon as I leave the hotel. To compensate for the heat, all the buildings run their air conditioning at subzero levels. Even with a jacket, by the end of the day I'm shivering in our conference room and anxious to get back to my hotel room where I have some control over the temperature. It's so cold inside that several times a day we take warm-up breaks outside the building, just long enough to get rid of that icy feeling. It reminds me of my first few months at my job, when I had a cold air vent blowing straight down on my desk. After complaining for a while, someone from building maintenance came up and fixed the problem by covering the vent with a piece of cardboard. Too bad I can't block the air vents in this conference room the same way.